Correlation between Russian and English - part 8 - Recap of correlation scheme This is a small recap of mine understanding of English basic rules. The most important thing that you must learn perfect tense. I don't know how you can handle without Совершенной формы глагола (Perfect tense) in Russian, and I don’t get, why we were explained that it is difficult and not frequent form of verb. Additional thing that you are highly likely to use - progressive tense, so i marked it yellow, same thing for passive voice. Perfect continuous I have marked in red, these colors I had picked up for difficulty since they were described through other parts of speech.

Correlation between Russian and English - part 7 - Perfect Tense review PERFECT TENSE REVIEW Second type of verbs is same to Russian “Совершенная форма глагола”, means that action is already completed, it is finished prior to moment of speaking. So 2nd row, same columns, but just a bit changed meaning of words. COMPLETED ACTION (PERFECT TENSE) So, to provide information about result you must use this tense. It is just exactly the same things as Russian version. So instead of “I do” use “I have done”. Я делаю домашнюю работу / I do homework. Я сделал домашнюю работу / I have done homework. Я закончил упражнения спортом / I have done sports. Она покрасила ее волосы / She has dyed her hairs. Also we could explain correlation with participles in Russian, here we have have active past perfect participle - действительное причастие прошедшего времени и совершенного вида: Я есть сделавший домашнюю работу. By the way, in English it is just past participle. But “Совершенная форма глагола” provides more sense that trying to find similarities between past participles. COMPLETED ACTION - PASSIVE (PERFECT TENSE - PASSIVE) Actually, you could consider it similar as simple passive tense, but instead of “am” you use “have been”. Домашняя работа сделана мною / Homework has been done by me. Упражнения сделаны мною / Sports has been done by me. Ее волосы покрашены ею / Her hairs have been dyed by her. To have one more perspective we could translate it with participle but with passive for that one: ДР есть сделанная мною (I just left translation of been word). P.S. I have made a reference to pronoun declension with her-her case (in Russian there is clear distinguish with ee & eю). LONG ACTION (PERFECT CONTINUOUS TENSE) Actually it is the same story to Perfect tense, but you only want to emphasize longevity of this action. Я делал домашнюю работу очень долго / I have been doing homework. Я занимался спортом очень долго / I have been doing sports. Она красила ее волосы очень долго / She has been dyeing her hairs.

Correlation between Russian and English - part 6 - Passive Tense review SIMPLE ACTION - PASSIVE But what what should we do if we want to use not ourselves as subject, but object as a subject? Домашняя работа делается мною / Homework is done by me. Спортивные занятия выполняются мною / Sports is done by me. Ее волосы красятся ею / Her hairs is painted by her. I know that I have used stupid examples, at least in Russian, it is all for being consistency in examples and showing correlation. And this is exactly the point to use simple and stupid illustrations, they helps act properly when real stuff begins (тяжело в учении, легко в бою / (idiom)?hard training-easy fighting?). Here is a good example: Кожа подвергается воздействию ультрафиолетового излучения / Skin is affected by ultra violet. But what if we want to describe it is “now” action? (also question about “is” in continuous and “is” in simple tense, it would be a little below). SIMPLE LONG ACTION - PASSIVE And there is again a problem that special tense is absent in Russian, but if you look into column “Long action / Passive” you clearly get it. Домашняя работа делается мною СЕЙЧАС / Homework is being done by me. Спортивные упражнения выполняются мною / Sports is being doing by me. Волосы красятся ею / Hairs is being dyed by her. Кожа подвергается воздействию ультрафиолетового излучения прямо сейчас / Skin is being affected by ultra violet. Problem is that there are two “is”-es in 2 of these tenses. And the thing is that there “is” in Simple is Main verb, but “is” in Progressive is auxiliary verb. And main verb right after auxiliary verb is not a verb, it is an active present participle - действительное причастие настоящего времени. I.e. you should probably translate is like: Я, делающий домашнюю работу. It’s a bit unnatural, but still understandable. It is always better with examples (it is just another perspective to the same thing): Я, делающий домашнюю работы, выполняю упражнения / I am doing homework doing exercises Keep it in mind, that Do and Have also could be an auxiliary verbs, yes - this Do in negative and question sentences is auxiliary verb.

Correlation between Russian and English - part 5 - Correlation basics and Simple Tense review Learning English without relation to my native seems to be impossible for me. So I will stick to this plan, same as we have in our schools: 1. General basis of sentence making; 2. Declensions, Conjugation; 3. Syntax!; 4. Conjugation (level 2), adverbs, participles, gerund and punctuation; 5. Game+ mode (if i am able to depict such skilled topic). Probably scheme before is good enough when you spend hundreds of hours, but we have basis from Russian, so I will always rely on that. Basis scheme to make sentences well known to us: 1. affirmative - subject+verb+object - You read a book; 2. negative - subject+auxiliary+verb+object - You do not read a book; 3. questions - auxiliary+subject+verb+object - Do you read a book. In general, I just had comprehended that perfect tense is equal to совершенная форма глагола, and generally you can just use 1 column to cover 80% of your (my) speech, but nevertheless. And, if you look into first 2x2 sub-table (just action wide column), you’ll see that it is exactly same as in Russian: simple = несовершенная форма глагола, perfect = совершенная форма глагола. And same thing is Passive voice, but long action is a brand new thing compare to Russian, however, in more details below. SIMPLE ACTION (Simple tense) Я делаю домашнюю работу / I do homework. This is about that you do your homework without any details, maybe time to time. Just simple, maybe homework, in this particular example, can be felt in Russian like you are doing it now, but if you change it to: Я занимаюсь спортом / I do sports; things become clear. In this example you tell that you are about sports and you do this. Она красит ее волосы / She dyes her hairs. SIMPLE LONG ACTION (Continuous tense) And you may noticed that there is stuff like “you are doing it now”, in Russian we don't have tense for that, so we have to use additionals or imply circumstances, therefore: Я делаю домашнюю работу ПРЯМО СЕЙЧАС / I am doing homework. Я занимаюсь спортом ПРЯМО СЕЙЧАС / I am doing sports. You may see that Russian tenses were not changed unlike English ones. Она красит ее волосы ПРЯМО СЕЙЧАС / She is dyeing her hairs.

Correlation between Russian and English - part 4 - The Problem for Russian speakers Additionally to described in previous topics, second fancy thing that add more mess into English lessons is choosing method, or how do we have to pick up The Time exactly. We have descriptions for each “Time” (tense), like: - simple = simple action, without particular result, or regular action; - continuous = action in a moment, if we want to describe things in a process; - perfect = we want to emphasize the result; - perfect continuous = if we want to emphasize longevity. So method is: 1) To make a sentence in Russian; 2) To try find out what is the purpose of my sentence; 3) To try pick out the match in English; 4) To ask yourself: am I right? 5) If you aren’t not => go to 2; 6) To make sentence by picking up the cell and sub cell. Simple, yeah? But reality is way more complex actually, a this is the moment where The Problem appears. Since we don’t have direct correlation between our languages (fancy article title?), 2-5 loop could be everlasting. And the fanciest thing that I was not the dumbest student but I knew nothing. And this is about all student in our country I assume. Probably now situation is getting better, but thanks to films, books and video-games with proper scenario (or thanks to Hollywood, Joanne Rowling and Bethesda Softworks). So this is inspirational that you can achieve whatever you want by self-development, but losing of substantial amount of time in School is frustrating.

Correlation between Russian and English - part 3 - How we were taught English? Do you know what we have at very first English lesson? We get information that unlike us, English have 12(24)-32 Times (form of verbs, but in Russian we call it as Time, for what reason I have no idea). I.e. Main Time, like Past, Present and Future, and 4 types of verb forms: Simple, Continuous, Perfect, Perfect Continuous. If you multiply one to another you get 12 Times. Some teachers also had added more “Times” to that stuff like future in the past. So quick googling gave me info that biggest amount is 32 Times (12 for looosers). And if you forget that there are 3 types of sentences, like statement question and negative you have made a mistake. So Present Simple is not equal to one piece of “Time”; there are affirmatives, questions and negative sentences. Present Simple = 3 pieces of “Times” or 3 Times (sick!) 12 Times = 36 cells in spreadsheets with explanations. OMG guys who had had 32 “Times” probably got 32*3=96 cells. I don't know if this spreadsheet is clear for native speakers, but this is complete nightmare and it is only The Simple Tense. But ok, even in this case, I can assume that we would get a proper result, if time spend amount is decent, but instead that we have been spending hours for rhyming irregular verbs, so everyone know see-saw-seen-break-broke-broken, but again we can only “London is the capital of Great Britain”. So instead of: -General basis of sentence making; -Declensions, Conjugation; -Syntax!; -Conjugation (level 2), adverbs, participles, gerund and punctuation; -Game+ mode. We have: -General basis + conjugation in each time (meh); -Rhyming; -Rhyming; -Rhyming; -Rhyming. I have probably overreacted a bit, you may feel my pain when you had spent 20 years for studying and only then you realized that tense is not equal to Time, English do not have special brains, and Tense is just a form of verb.

Correlation between Russian and English - part 2 - How we were taught Russian? We have same 11 years to spend for Russian and for English in parallel, but results are completely different. I am going to describe it relying to Classes, this is the word we use for describing level/years/grades. They were pretty same to years, except we skipped 4 Class and went from 3rd to 5th directly, but nowaday school students have continuous 11 years for school. 1 grade is for very basic, about how to form sentences: affirmatives, questions, exclamations. We don’t have special topic for negative statements. Primary school takes 4 years (previously 3). So for me 1-3 classes were for basics, just learning words, parts of speech, grammar cases, declensions (we have to change forms of nouns, numerals and adjectives depends on amount, grammar gender and grammar case, as I get there is no such thing in English, like adjective always have only 1 form even there is no such thing as plural adjective, but there is something for pronouns), conjugations (same thing for verbs, but additionally you have to pick up time to change form of verb). But there are only basics: nouns, numerals, adjectives, but adverbs, participles (past and present) would be later, also gerund (if you translate it as деепричастие). 5 class is the most important year for studying Russian ... in my opinion. That year we study syntax. But I have never faced with such separate topic as “Syntax analysis of sentence” in English course. It is about how you can use different parts of speech as different parts of sentence. Later teachers use it as a basis to implement participles and participles phrases easily. Also it is quite useful for punctuation. 6-9 classes are about parts of speech (noun, verbs, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, participles and gerunds), complex sentences, punctuation and conjugation. 10-11 classes are about repeating all this stuff again but with increased difficulty. We had taken sentences whole page long with nightmare punctuation. It’s quite a challenge to pass. So the path is clear, to pass this quest please get this milestones: -General basis of sentence making; -Declensions, Conjugation; -Syntax!; -Conjugation (level 2), adverbs, participles, gerund and punctuation; -Game+ mode. And interesting remark, we do not have any related topic according to Time, like how to make Past Perfect sentences. I have googled that we have 1 lesson in 2nd class, but that is all. It is all described in conjugation theme.

Correlation between Russian and English - part 1 - Introduction In Russia, we have huge problem in studying English. Probably we could name it The Problem. By the end of the education period, we can't speak in English at all, the only thing we know is just rhymed irregular verbs (break-broke-broken, see-saw-seen), but the use of participles, for example, already is unachievable magic. "London is the capital of Great Britain" - all we can. I.e. we have proper passive lexicon and can translate English texts in Russian pretty much correctly because of word meaning, but we're always missing details since we do not understand collocations and constructions. I am not an English teacher, and I have probably already made a couple of mistakes in the introduction, but these things I will describe below helped me to make a rush from “My name is Kolya” to thinking in English and speaking mostly without any struggle. And this exactly The Problem, up to 15 years of studying are in vain. 11 years of school + 3-4 in university. And for me, the understanding of things which I have described below (and in next articles) helped me just during 1 month to make such rush. I will explain things in these topics: -How we were taught Russian and what pros this method has; -How we were taught English and main problem of it; -I will try to put in on paper my understanding of English related to Russian course in Russia. There are some techniques and different approaches it will probably be helpful for you too. Yes, I have prepared some of the articles already, hope it will be helpful for at least someone.